


A Radicalization of the Teen Hero

by UnapologeticallyMeatwad



Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: Activism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Climate Change, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Guillotine, Heroes to Villains, Politics, Protests, Socialism, eat the rich, this is the future leftists want
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:46:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27311380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnapologeticallyMeatwad/pseuds/UnapologeticallyMeatwad
Summary: So the Drama AU where Kim and Ron’s paths diverge. Kim becomes an eco-terrorist, and Ron joins Global Justice. Each of them needs to kill the other for the better of the planet, but neither can work up the nerve. This is the story of their radicalization.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	1. Know Why You Are Here and What You Are Doing

**Author's Note:**

> CW: mentions of police brutality

Kim got sloppy. This is her fault. 

It was a pretty standard mission. Doctor Drakken had some kind of death ray set up to destroy this Global Justice base in Ohio. Team Possible was sent in to destroy it, and they succeeded. But when the death ray went boom, so did Drakken’s hideout. Kim still feels the smoke in her lungs as she comes to.

She tried to escape, but wasted so much energy saving Drakken’s life that the smoke got to her. She remembers giving her gas mask to him and an iron beam falling to the floor besides her. She doesn’t remember passing out. But she’s waking up now. She’s bound to a wooden chair in what looks like a prison cell. She doesn’t really know, she just woke up here. She could be anywhere in the world.

At least Ron got away. Kim doesn’t really care what happens to her, as long as he’s safe. Though she wouldn’t be shocked if he mounted a rescue mission; Ron only does Team Possible to protect Kim. Like, he won’t admit it if you ask him, but it’s pretty obvious.

Then Dr. Drakken and Shego step in.

So. It’s a kidnapping then. She grits her teeth. “This is low, even for you,” she growls.

“Kimberly Ann, please relax, we’re not going to hurt you,” Drakken coos, backing away when she spits at the floor. “Nyergh, okay. Shego? Untie her.”

“Got it,” Shego takes a knee besides the wooden chair, green plasma slowly burning through the ropes binding her. 

“Ow!” Kim shrieks, flames licking her bare wrists.

“Sorry,” Shego says pretty sincerely in return. “I tied these way too tight on you, that’s my b. It’ll be over in a sec. Doc, can you grab Princess her lunch?” 

“Lunch?” Kim repeats.

Drakken nods obediently and marches off, turning around a corner. Kim hears the hum of what is most certainly a refrigerator, and feels the ropes fall off her wrists. She’s free now. She could probably try to fight back, but honestly food sounds good right now. She’s starving and her lips are dry.

“We’re not going to hurt you, okay?” Shego says very carefully, squeezing Kim’s arm. “We just want to talk.”

Kim looks up at the older woman, and sees something soft in her eyes. Kim grimaces and looks away. Shego and Drakken are evil. This has to be some kind of scheme to defeat her. 

“I still think it’s pretty low to kidnap a sixteen year old girl,” Kim mutters. 

“Well,” Drakken groans, stepping in with a styrofoam tray in hand. “You’re not the easiest person to talk to. We saved your life for what it’s worth.”

“I figured,” she sighs meekly. “Thanks,” she adds on when it starts to feel awkward.

Drakken sets up a folding table in front of her, and opens the tray. It’s a fat cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles, with a side of very dry looking steak fries. Definitely just heated up in the microwave. Probably from some nearby deli.

“Sorry it’s not fresh, I just wanted to make sure you had food the second you woke up,” Drakken apologizes, pulling a chair over for himself and Shego. 

Not really knowing how to respond, Kim eats it. Probably too fast. She plows through the food, and doesn’t say anything for the first minute, mostly because this is so awkward, eating in front of people who routinely try to kill her. But she really just needs a second to appreciate this and be thankful that she is alive and — apparently — safe.

“So,” Kim covers her mouth with her hand. “You um, wanted to talk?”

“Y-yes,” Drakken shifts his weight from side to side. “We’ve been doing this runaround for about a year. I come up with an evil plan, Shego steals what I need for it, and you show up, destroy my plans, and save the day.”

“I’m pretty good at it,” Kim’s cheeks are puffed out from all the food. 

“Yes,” Drakken snips, looking at her food. God, it’s like he’s about to tell her about the birds and the bees. He sucks in a deep breath and finds her eyes. 

“Kimberly Ann, do you understand why I want to take over the world?”

* * *

Kim’s parents knock at her door. They aren’t already supposed to know she’s here, but Kim is still sloppy and she fucked up. Just like the last mission. She made too much noise and now her parents know she’s back from allegedly getting kidnaped. But Kim really just needs to be alone for the time being. 

“We’ll talk tomorrow morning!” she shouts, feigning a happy tone. When it seems like her parents have accepted that the conversation will just have to wait, Kim groans and flips onto her side. 

That was her first time ever getting captured like that and there’s definitely going to be some questions asked regarding her safety in the future. But Kim isn’t focused on that. She even forgets to text Ron that she’s safe until the next day. Ron screams and cries tears of joys when he comes in to snag some breakfast and finds her chewing on bacon.

It takes Kim a solid three hours to fall asleep. Her mind buzzes with information. Drakken explained so much in his lecture about why he wants to conquer the planet, but she still doesn’t understand. Something’s in the way for her, it makes her feel stupid.

Drakken talked about climate change, and how fossil fuels and rainforest fires are destroying the planet in the name of profit. He talked about how mass amounts of plastic are diluting into our ocean and making the saltwater into plastic soup. He talked about corrupt politicians and the revolving door. He talked about lies the government makes to justify killing people. 

About prisons. 

About gun violence. 

About police brutality. 

Drakken… actually cried. Shego had to finish the speech while consoling him.

Kim had no idea either of those two actually cared that much. He said that he wants to take over the world so he can fix these things, because otherwise, no one in charge ever will.

They fed her. They fixed her wounds. And they brought her home safely. She’s thankful for them. So many people take Kim for granted, but Drakken and Shego definitely don’t. She’ll never forget that. 

Now she’s in bed, her very soft bed. Her family loves her, people adore her, and nothing is wrong. Twenty years from now, they’ll still love her. Fuck, they’ll celebrate her. Kim Possible, Teen Hero. The one who stopped Drakken from saving the world.

Maybe she’s the bad guy.

Kim stows it all away; she has to.

* * *

But it never leaves her. 

Kim stops hanging out so much with Monique and Ron. She still does missions regularly but it’s different now. She spends a lot of time alone in her room watching documentaries. _An Inconvenient Truth_ . _How to Survive a Plague_. A ton of Werner Herzog movies.

It’s not enough. She’s hungry.

She reads books. Everything Drakken said is real. With climate change, it’s inevitable. _We’re past the point of no return_ , scientists admit to each other in private, occasionally having the nerve to put it on the page. Everything— _everyone_ —is dying, yet Kim still does her dance with Drakken. 

She defeats them regularly. They never talk about it. Makes Kim feel like a coward. She owes them. 

Kim always thought that people were good and that the systems in power mirrored that sentiment. But no. Reality is just a game to the rich. She feels so reluctant doing missions nowadays, especially when it’s Drakken. She doesn’t want to stop him.

Drakken and Shego aren’t supervillains. Global Justice and the media just create that image to make his idea seem outlandish, and Drakken, in his desperation for recognition, buys into it.

Kim feels bad fighting back, but she can’t let up. She can’t lose. She still needs to trust that what she does makes sense.

* * *

It’s early into Kim’s junior year when she gets an emergency alert from Wade. There’s a robbery that Kim and Ron just so happen to be nearby. Her mission is to stop the crooks from stealing money from the bank. A nonviolent heist so far; no one’s been hurt thankfully.

Kim puts her game face on and rushes onto the scene, dragging Ron along with her. 

Then she stops. She sees the ski masked criminals leap into a car and floor it. If Kim wanted to, she could use a grapple to propel herself into the air and conceivably land on top of the car. Hell, she’s done it before. It’s easy. Hurts like a bitch, but it’s easy.

Yet Kim can’t move. Her jaw locks in and her body goes stiff.

“Kim!” Ron yanks on her arm like it’s an on switch. “KP! They’re getting away!”

“Yeah,” she rasps from the back of her throat. “I know.”

“Wh-wh-what…” Ron stumbles. “Are you—do you need me to—”

Kim shakes her head and turns on her heel, walking off the crime scene. Ron hurries after her, asking her a barrage of questions. Like fuck, if he cares so much why doesn’t he just go take care of it himself.

“Ron, stop!” she snaps, her temple throbbing. She stares into his eyes and sees how he quivers. “Fuck, sorry, I didn’t mean to…” she presses her hands into his shoulders, literally leaning into him. “I can explain.”

Kim exhales and looks up to him. “Those people are desperate if they’re robbing a bank like that, and God knows the banks have enough money. It’s fine.”

Ron’s eyes widen so much, and she knows he doesn’t believe her. He thinks that because it’s illegal it’s wrong. Makes sense. That’s their world after all. Black and white. 

Kim doesn’t explain anymore. She’s suddenly very tired and goes home.

She watches the police chase on television, well, off her Kimmunicator. Under her blanket. Like a child. She doesn’t want her parents to know she’s doing this.

The day ends in tragedy when the criminals are all killed. The police ‘accidentally’ shoot all of them through the head, even though the robbers were all unarmed.

Kim wouldn’t have killed them. But that’s what cops do. They get paid a lot of money to kill people, mostly poor people. And black people.

Kim works with cops sometimes. But not anymore.

* * *

Except for the time that Kim runs into her former friend, Officer Hobble. He’s on the crime scene, taking notes. It was some elaborate heist from Monkey Fist who was looking for ancient monkey artifacts. From Kim’s understanding, the artifacts were actually stolen first by the museum itself, so she feels pretty ambivalent about Monkey Fist getting away.

Though Ron is fuming. Which Kim is sort of thankful for; she doesn’t give a shit and he does.

The cops don’t let Kim and Ron leave the crime scene, so Kim lets Ron do all the talking and completely tunes everything out, leaning against the wall with crossed arms, eyes blank.

“Kim?” Ron asks, patting her on the shoulder. “Yo, Kim. Earth to Kim.”

“Wh-what now?” she snaps awake, blushing. “Sorry, I spaced out.”

“No worries, KP,” Ron smiles, always so understanding with her. “Officer Hobble here—” he jerks a thumb at the cop, and the pig cutely waves to Kim. “—was wondering if we could help him on the investigation, since we kinda know Monkey Fist really well.”

Kim freezes, thinking. Monkey Fist is _bad_ for real. He’s not like Drakken and Shego, he’s a narcissist and she does want to catch the guy but…

“No,” Kim says firmly.

Ron flinches, and then furrows his brow. “No?”

Kim never says _No_.

She nods her head, looking directly at Hobble. “That would be unpaid labor, also unethical because Ron and I are both children. Therefore it’s highly illegal. Plus, we don’t work with cops.”

Ron raises an eyebrow. “Um, hey, don’t speak for me. I’m fine with cops, what’s your problem?”

Officer Hobble chuckles and pats Ron on the shoulder. “Ease down, soldier. Miss Possible, with all due respect, I mean, I shouldn’t have to explain this to you. But we’re your allies, honey. We protect the law and—”

“—kill people,” Kim finishes for him, leering so hard. Her fists are clenched, shaking even. “You agitate, you hurt people, and you abuse your power. Maybe Ron is fine with that, but I’m not.”

Officer Hobble snorts and walks off without a word. Kim watches him go, heart pounding. It’s cold and she should be asleep. But instead she’s doing dumb missions ‘til 2 in the morning on a school night. 

“Kim, look at me,” Ron snips. 

Kim turns and sees Ron actually kinda angry, hands on his hips. “What the Hell? You watch a couple of documentaries and suddenly you hate cops? C’mon.”

Kim feels it. It’s this shifting in her heart, this opening rift in the air. The ground slides her farther and farther from Ron and he just stands there, so upset. He probably feels it too.

She shrugs, unsure how to explain how she feels. “I don’t trust cops. Remember that robbery where the cops killed those people we were supposed to stop?”

“So?” Ron asks. “I agree with you, that was fucked up, but like—Officer Hobble had nothing to do with that!”

“He enables it! He’s part of this, like, white supremacist system. He has to know this institution is wrong, I mean—” Kim yells back. The rift grows wider. She bites her lip and shakes her head. She’s cringing at herself, she’s not explaining it well at all. And she feels stupid and worthless. She touches her wrist, holding back tears. “I can’t do this right now, Ron. Not with you. I’m sorry, I need to go. See you at school.”

But Kim doesn’t see him at school; she ignores him all day and begs Wade to give her a solo mission to get her out of facing him.

* * *

A few months later, Shego pushes Kim against a wooden table, and poker chips flip everywhere. The hanging light swinging back and forth, things shifting from being in darkness to being visible fast. Shego’s arm is stuck in the wood and she’s trying to pull it out.

Kim hates Drakken and Shego so much right now. This is their second caper where she has absolutely no idea what’s going on. First they try and fail to kidnap the toymaker, Nakasumi-san, and now they are at the Bermuda Triangle. It’s Drakken’s first plan that’s actually… kind of subtle. It makes Kim feel stupid.

She’s been feeling stupid a lot lately.

Kim could kick Shego off her, but she doesn’t want to. She’s exhausted and is sick of hurting people. So she just lays there and looks off to the side.

“Kim!” Ron dives at her, only to get slammed by a plasma bolt to the stomach. He crumples on the floor.

Despite the tension still alive between her and him, Kim still panics. “Ron—”

“Sh,” Shego growls. “He’ll be fine. Trust me. What’s up with you?”

She trusts Shego. Kim’s head falls back against the wood, vision blurry. Her body is so sore, she could fall asleep here. “I don’t understand.”

Shego’s eyes shimmer and she nods. “What? Me and Doc?”

“Sometimes, I don’t,” Kim’s cheek falls on the wood. “I don’t understand anything anymore. I’m tired of this.”

“You’re burnt out,” Shego says.

Kim doesn’t want to admit it, but yeah. “I don’t want to fight you, Shego. I’m sick of it.”

“Then don’t.”

“It’s not that easy, you know that. I don’t know why you’re here, I’m assuming you’re getting intel from Big Daddy Brotherson but like… I’m sure it’s bad. And I’m the person to stop you.”

“You choose to be that girl though,” Shego pulls her arm free, and leans back into her knees. She holds a hand out for Kim to take but she just lays flat on the table. “Princess… uh, I’m going to give you some advice. If you’re burnt out, take a break. Like I did.”

“I can’t take a break,” Kim moans. “People are counting on me.”

“Well, you’re no good to anyone like this, Kimmie. Come on, take my hand.”

Kim complies and hunches over. She feels so small in front of Shego. Probably because she’s still a child. She always forgets that she’s still just a kid. She wonders if it gets easier when you’re older. Honestly, she feels like crying. But she can’t. She can’t let Ron see. This conversation has already been too long and he’ll be up any second now. 

And if he sees Kim crying in Shego’s arms like an eight year old, she’ll never hear the end of it.

Shego brushes Kim’s cheek. Oh no, it’s really coming in now. Her throat’s tightening. 

Shego smiles. “It’s alright. I don’t know, I don’t think Doc’s plans make sense sometimes but I just… I just trust him. Hey, what if—oh.”

Kim leans her head into Shego’s breasts, and Shego pulls her in, running her fingers through Kim’s hair so tentatively. She rubs her back.

“Do you… um… need to cry?” Shego stutters.

“Yes,” Kim chokes. 

“Ew, okay, let it out.”

She does.

* * *

Kim gets frustrated and puts her site on a one week hiatus. Ron gets frustrated at her for making this decision without him, but she just shrugs it off and sends him a passive aggressive text about him being perfectly content with her making every other decision. Like if he wants power, he needs to step up. 

Bored, with nothing to do, she decides to pick up some volunteer work to keep her busy. 

The primary election is coming up, so she looks into it. There’s a race for Representative within Middleton, Upperton, and Lowerton, where a progressive is challenging the Democrat incumbent. It’s looking pretty grim. The incumbent is a likable old bald white guy who’s had the seat for twenty year. But man, he’s got some incredibly centrist politics. He knows how to play the game, and rakes in money over it. 

The progressive running comes from union organizing and is refusing any kind of corporate donors. Kim doesn’t really understand politics, but she decides she should help them based on that information alone. Though she’d strongly prefer not to put herself in as a _celebrity endorsement_. Mostly for her mental health. She just wants to be Kim, the girl who gives people she can’t see a helping hand.

She gets set up to do this thing called phonebanking from home. She likes it because she can just do it while brooding in her bed. 

Phonebanking is where you call people, generally registered votes, and ask them to support a certain candidate. But it’s mostly waiting for people to pick up their phone. It can take ten dials before anyone answers and even then, they might just hang up on you. It’s pretty hard to get folk’s attention so Kim decides she needs more training, and attends one of the in-person trainings in the campaign office. Which is actually just a rented space inside of a strip mall. 

She learns a lot of tips n’ tricks. Like smile while you dial, be patient with people, try to keep everything simple, and focus on listening more than talking. It starts to get better for her and she has an easier time getting people to actually stay on the phone with her while they talk politics.

Then the campaign organizers ask Kim to go canvassing, and she says no. Because canvassing is door to door, and she knows that if she shows up on someone’s doorstep, she’s going to get clocked right away as _the Kim Possible, wowie zowie._ At least on the phone, it’s just her voice. She can be relatively anonymous.

She wishes she could canvas though. But she likes phonebanking enough. So she keeps at it.

A week passes by. Then two. Then a month. Kim still doesn’t want to do Team Possible. She likes volunteering for the campaign. It makes her feel happy. She manages to flip her parents from supporting the incumbent to supporting the progressive. But it’s a long battle. The poll numbers aren’t looking good for them.

And then Ron starts going on missions again. Kim finds out in the worst way, through seeing the news on her phone that Ronald Kennedy Stoppable tried and failed to thwart one of Duff Killigan’s evil plans. Despite the rift between them, Kim calls the Stoppables and finds out that Ron is at home. But he doesn’t want to see her. 

So Kim doesn’t have a choice but to respect his space. Another month passes by and it’s February. Ron is still out there and he does incredible things. He thwarts Drakken’s mass mind control scheme by out-rappin’ him on national television. He apprehends the scary criminal, Gorilla Fist. He stops villain after villain after villain, getting better and better at what he does. He’s pretty much turning into the next Kim Possible.

Kim and Ron don’t talk because he doesn’t want to talk to her. She’s getting kinda pissed off at him herself now. And of course it gets worse.

She was watching most of the news to see what the deal is with Ron. But when she watches the whole programs, and reads the articles, she realizes no one actually gives a fuck about Ron Stoppable. What they want to know is: 

_Where is Kim Possible_?

Kim feels _really_ guilty about that, but what is she supposed to do?

* * *

“You might want to make a statement,” one of the Hispanic organizers, Daniel, tells her. 

Kim looks up from her computer screen, and clicks out of the dialer. She wasn’t really focused anyways, she was reading news about Ron again. “Like what? Explaining why I’m doing this instead of Team Possible stuff?”

“Something like that,” Daniel shrugs. “Up to you, all I’m saying is we are behind ten points and the election is in two weeks.”

“Yeah,” Kim sighs. She’s like, still an _influencer_ despite everything. So she does it. She gets on a local radio show to talk about why she pivoted from hero work to campaign work. She really hates talking about herself like this, and it’s hard because the show’s hosts keep badgering Kim with questions about her personal life and not the candidate. She tries her best though, and it produces a few good soundbites and finally gets the candidate that sweet celebrity endorsement.

People like Kim Possible after all, or at least…

“They like the idea of me more than what I actually believe in,” she admits to her parents one night. “I’m not letting you down by not doing missions, am I?”

Her parents seem so startled at that. It’s confusing to her.

“God no,” her dad drags her in and holds her tight. “Honey, maybe you could be out there saving the world but your heart’s not in it. You should be doing what makes you happy, you’ll do a lot better at it.”

She really needed to hear that.

* * *

But then her candidate loses by a 2% margin.

They all cry together in the campaign office, seeing the results unfold live on television, and Kim doesn’t get out of bed for a full twenty fours after that.

She can’t stop thinking. What if she gave her phonebanking shifts an extra fifteen minutes every day. She could have talked to, maybe like, three more supporters every day, and between all of her shifts she did, fuck, that’d be like… two hundred more people in support at least. Those two hundred could have flipped three friends each and become eight hundred. 

What if she did her endorsement earlier, and used her time on the air to ask voters to get on the phones?

God, fucking damnnit. 

How did they lose the race? What was the point to any of it?

“ _It happens_ ,” Daniel tells her via text. “ _We lost, but now the status quo knows we’re coming for them. We’ll do it again in two years, I promise you_.”

* * *

Finally, Kim and Ron meet up again, at Bueno Nacho of course. But Bueno Nacho’s not so cute anymore, there are children _everywhere_. People are going wild over this Li’l Diablo thing. Kim doesn’t really get it. It’s just a dumb toy.

Ron sets a Li’l Diablo down on the table in front of them, dark rings under his eyes. “Here, take mine.”

Kim raises an eyebrow. “Um, I’m good. Thanks.”

“Figured,” he sighs. “It’s so annoying, they like, _make you_ take one, even if you don’t want the toy. Whatever. To the trash.” He slides it back into his tray. 

Something about the design bothers Kim. It’s so colorful and… honestly memorable? Like it’s actually a pretty nice toy to get with your fast food, but it goes totally against the grain of Bueno Nacho in general, which has never done toys before. Even when compared to other fast food joints, Li’l Diablo is blatantly better designed than most fast food toys.

It’s… weird. Like something is off about it.

“Actually, I’ll take it,” Kim snatches the Lil Diablo up, eyeballing it. “So uh, what’s new with you?”

Ron rests his cheek against his palm, slowly eating up his nacho drenched chips. “S’alright. Missions have been chill, I’m definitely getting a lot better at it, and uh… heh.” He blushes. “I got me a lady friend.”

Kim blinks. 

_Ron_ is dating someone?

“Wh-who?” Kim asks a little too quickly. She suddenly feels _very_ flustered. 

“New girl,” Ron slurps his soda. “Erica. You may have…”

“Oh! Yeah, Erica. Huh. You were, um, showing her around school. Wow, g-good for you, Ron. Heh.”

Ron just smiles. Kim feels so angry because she should be happy for him but she just can’t feel that right now. 

“Are you two… like… official?” she asks.

Ron grins, savoring the taste of his next chip to hold onto the drama of it all. “Yes. A-actually, we were going to come here today as a date, but when you texted me you wanted to hang, I canceled with her because like, you tend to—uh, nevermind.”

“...tend to what?”

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“Ron.”

“Shit, I shouldn’t have—you tend to _jel_ , Kim.”

“Oh,” she says flatly. That kinda hurts, especially because she knows he is right. Ron is living his best life and she’s turning into a couch potato who’s always angry about things. “I do jel. Sorry. I haven’t been feeling great lately.”

“I figured,” he noticeably avoids eye contact, and his voice trails off. “If you ever want to come back to the team, I mean you can, I guess. I’m doing fine on my own but like…” His eyes are so blank, it’s like he’s on automatic. But then he suddenly snaps and gets super alert. “...actually, fuck it. No.”

His eyes get angry and big, and Kim shrinks back in the booth. “Um.”

“I’m kinda pissed at you, KP,” Ron says. “You haven’t been a good friend lately, and I’m like, 100% sure you’re here to ask me if you can come back. And oh-bee-vee, I can’t stop you, but like—you can’t come back just because you’re lonely and have no friends.”

Ouch, that actually stings a lot. She winces. Ron saw right through her. He always does.

She almost cries. It just catches her so off guard that he would call her out like that. But she holds it back. 

“Like, if you want friends, just hang out with me normally,” Ron shrugs. “But no, you don’t even believe our old missions are good for anything, do you?”

Kim bows her head. “I… don’t know. I’m just… I’m devastated.” She looks right at him and pleads, “I just spent two months volunteering for literal hours every day, hoping it would make a difference and… it didn’t. We lost. People didn’t care enough.”

“Oh, the election thing? Yeah I heard,” he mutters. “But like, I know I sound like an asshole, Kim, but—”

“It’s fine.”

“—if these things aren’t making you happy, you need to try something else. It’s time to grow up.”

Kim bites her lip, and holds it all in. Never would she have expected the boy who still jumps into piles of leaves whenever he sees them would be the one to tell her to grow up. Pretty humiliating. Like this is the dressing down of a lifetime.

“Hey, um,” Kim croaks. “Did you, uh, ever figure out what Drakken’s new scheme is?”

“Dog,” Ron returns to his usual cool guy vibes. “I legit don’t get it. Like at all.”

* * *

Kim does nothing for hours the night she comes home from seeing Ron. She just feels really empty inside. She holds the Li’l Diablo in her hand, thumb running over its smooth, plastic surfaces. This toy is weird. It’s selling like hotcakes. It’s unprecedented. 

Kim falls onto her pillow thinking. She comes up with nothing and falls asleep.

One week later she has a breakthrough; a few months ago, Shego tried to kidnap Nakasumi-san, the esteemed toymaker. Shego failed but… it’s suspicious. So she calls Nakasumi-san’s offices. No one wants to let her through, so Kim reluctantly does a namedrop and she’s able to make it right through to the top. 

Nakasumi-san is so upset that he doesn’t even have Miss Kyoko do the fake translating for him. A few weeks ago, he sued Bueno Nacho for stealing his toy design. But because he has an astounding lack of proof, there’s no legal case for him and therefore no lawsuit. 

The fancy Bueno Nacho PR team made sure to cover this all up. Coincidentally, Bueno Nacho went under new management around the same time.

That’s something. This is no longer suspicious, it’s… a case. A Team Possible worthy case. She almost calls Ron to talk it over with him, but then remembers that he’s either on a mission or with his—um—girlfriend—now. So. Best not be a bother.

Especially when he blatantly doesn’t want to be near her.

So Kim keeps digging.

Drakken tried to kidnap Nakasumi-san, failed, and now the man’s toy designs are on the market. But there is nothing linking Drakken to Bueno Nacho, aside from the few times he’s blown up their restaurants. It is true that there’s _new management_ in charge of the fast food chain but like… Doctor Drakken? 

Kim puts a pin on it. She keeps looking, and talks to her dad. Because well, uh, awkward, but Dad got kidnapped a while back. By Drakken. And no one thought to tell Kim because she was out phonebanking and Ron was on-call for a mission.

Problem is… Dad doesn’t remember much, so instead he tells her about the thing he’s working on: The Hephaestus Project. It’s… honestly kind of scary. It allows machines to expand rapidly and _evolve_ . Dad thinks it’s cool, not really understanding how it could be militarized. It’s like that thing in _Jurassic Park_ when he’s like, _Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should_.

Her dad is one of those scientists now. He’s building something that could be easily used to win wars.

Hence it being something that Drakken would _want_. It fits his M.O., he loves stealing smarter people’s work.

Kim almost wants to ask him if he could take a look at the Li’l Diablo toy to see if it’s been enhanced by his work, because well, she’s got a hunch but… she’d rather not. There is _nothing_ connecting Doctor Drakken to Bueno Nacho still, and it still doesn’t explain why Drakken would visit the Bermuda Triangle.

Hmph.

Kim doesn’t need to know about the Bermuda Triangle, she decides. The only one who can reveal that information to her is Big Daddy Brotherson himself and Kim is not willing to do that. She isn’t doing this investigation to like, stop Drakken or anything. She doesn’t want to do missions, she just wants friends.

So this is just a puzzle. A puzzle she really needs to figure out.

She’s still good at this, she knows she is.

But nothing connects Doctor Drakken to Bueno Nacho.

She groans. 

This. Sucks.

* * *

Prom Night comes. Kim is lounging in her bedroom in just a hoodie and sweatpants. A ton of boys asked her out but she said no to all of them. Her mom tried to talk her into just going stag, but nothing moves Kim. She just lays there, thinking. It’s just a normal night, it’s not a big deal she’s sitting it out, because she’s stupid and worthless. She gave up missions to work on a campaign that failed. She lost touch with her best friend, and now she can’t even figure out a Doctor Drakken scheme. 

She closes her eyes. She doesn’t have the evidence.

Kim imagines Drakken laughing at her, taunting her that she can’t figure it out. Because that’s how he wants her to feel, he wants her to feel helpless. He did such a damn good hiding the evidence, it’s not like him. 

...or maybe it is.

Kim thinks about her conversation with Drakken that happened almost a year ago now. He spoke extensively about corporations and how they are destroying the planet because they have amassed so much power to do horrible things. Drakken _loathes_ corporations. They burn rainforests, underpay workers, devalue human life, steal, and pollute. 

Drakken knows what a corporation can do, and for this plan to work… it would require capitalism. Because if these Li’l Diablos really are future war machines connected to the Hephaestus Project, then they would need to be mass produced to be remotely effective. 

Drakken needs capitalism for this to work, and it’s working right now. Because Drakken is the new CEO of Bueno Nacho. Kim is 100% certain.

Like fuck, even Kim has a Li’l Diablo. Millions of people must have them.

Kim sets the toy on her bed, staring at it, as if her looking will make something happen. But no. It hasn’t been activated yet, but soon it will and then...

If Kim is wrong, it doesn’t matter, but if she’s right, she needs to move fast.

It has to be Kim. But she needs help. She needs help desperately.

…

…

Kim slaps her jacket on, grabs her bike, and beelines to the school. She doesn’t even stop to change and put on a dress or anything. She crashes into the bike rack, kicks off, and doesn’t chain her bike down, rushing into the school gymnasium. Lights flash and music throbs. Ron is at the center, dancing along with his girlfriend, Erica. He looks so happy and so silly, flapping his limbs around. 

It makes Kim hesitate.

No, she needs him.

“Ron!” she shouts, turning several heads. She pushes through the crowd and repeats herself, “RON!”

Ron turns, blinking stupidly, still dancing. “Oh, uh, hey KP… you look… good?”

Erica leans into Ron’s ear and whispers something, smirking at Kim, and he chuckles at whatever that _something_ is. Ugh.

“I figured out what Drakken’s up to,” Kim says with so much urgency. “You know the Li’l Diablo toys at Bueno Nacho?”

“Yeah, they suck,” Ron raises an eyebrow. “Yo, Kim. You okay? You look, uh, kinda manic.”

“Sh,” she holds up a finger, hardly self-aware of how she appears. Sweaty with dark rings under her eyes, tangled and frayed hair, in lazy clothing meant for divorced fathers not teenage girls. “That toy was designed by Nakasumi-san, he sued Bueno Nacho for copyright infringement but lawyers shut the case down because he has no proof. The only design Nakasumi-san made of Li’l Diablo had to have been stolen, and who tried to kidnap him?”

Ron furrows his brow. “Sh-Shego, but Kim…”

“Bueno Nacho is under new management, right?” Kim’s hands fly around rapidly, making new gestures for almost every word. “C’mon. Put two and two together with me, Ron.”

Ron mouths some words along with her, and frowns. “Why though?”

Erica raises an eyebrow, grabbing Ron by both shoulders. “Ron, c’mon, she’s talking crazy, let’s—”

“Hold up,” Ron swats her away. “I wanna hear her out. Kim wouldn’t just, like, make up shit.”

His faith in her makes her smile, and she feels much more relaxed when she tells him about the Hephaestus Project. The more she talks, the more the Ron she knows smiles back. She hasn’t felt like this in so long. It’s revitalizing. She cracked a case. 

“But now what?” Ron asks.

“Ron, are you serious?” Erica whines, tugging on his arm. “Let’s just daaaaance.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Ron nods, looking to Kim. “Well, thanks for the lead. I’ll talk to Wade and I’ll—”

Kim freezes, and Ron picks up on it. “KP? What’s wrong?”

Kim didn’t think this far ahead. She just wanted to solve the mystery and it’s done but… well, you don’t just solve mysteries, you take action on them. _Kim_ takes action on them.

But Kim doesn’t want to do missions anymore. She doesn’t even know if Doctor Drakken is really an enemy. But she needs to know, she needs to find out, and tonight is the night to do that. 

She holds her hand out to Ron. “Come with me. We need to go to Bueno Nacho Headquarters right now.”

Ron bites his lip.

She continues, “If I’m right, Drakken is set-up to take over the world at any moment. We need to go and shut this down. I know it’s Prom but…” She looks to Erica. “...this is what we do.”

Ron looks to Erica too, paling fast. He scratches the back of his neck and nods. “Sorry Erica but Kim’s right. I don’t think she’d lie to me like that, we… we gotta go and try.”

* * *

Infiltration goes okay. Ron beats up goons, Kim takes on Shego and boy does Kim get the worse end of it. Sliced lip, black eye, and too many other cuts to count. But she lumbers on despite the bleeding, leaning up against Ron for support. God, she missed him so much. She hopes he feels the same way.

But things go bad pretty soon. Ron’s prom date appears, riding down an escalator and it just feels… off. Why is Erica here? Didn’t she think Kim’s theory was stupid as fuck?

Instinctively, Kim gets between Ron and Erica, pushing him back.

Erica freezes and smirks directly at Kim before feigning distress. “Looks like your best friend is paranoid, Ronnie.”

“Yeah, a little,” Ron rubs her shoulders and brushes past her. “Kim, amp down. It’s just Erica, she’s—”

“Why is she here?!” Kim hisses, clamping her hand around Ron’s wrist. “Please. You’ve trusted me so far tonight, and it looks like I’m right. Drakken is definitely here. Trust me again.”

Ron frowns and it takes him a second too long to make his decision, and then he screams as electricity jolts up his spine. Fried, he falls to the floor, his powder blue blazer smoking. Erica cackles and stuffs away her taser. 

Kim kinda blacks out in a rage. She doesn’t remember what happens next really, just that when she gets onto the rooftop, this green acid has burnt holes through her clothing and right into her skin. It’s going to be really bad later on when they make her go to the hospital, but she trudges along for now. 

Ron’s down, Shego’s down, and Erica is probably dead. 

It’s just Kim. 

It’s raining. Shadows shimmer across the rooftop. Up in the air, gigantic versions of the Li’l Diablo bots fill up the skies. Drakken just activated them. Hopefully, no one has died yet.

Drakken tails behind Kim, dressed in a powder blue suit of his own. He mutters rapidly, clawing at her desperately. “Stop it, Kimberly Ann! Stop!”

She turns on him, gaze cold. “How do I stop it.”

Drakken frowns. “Why would I tell you?”

Kim shivers in the cold. She’s bleeding and it’s cold. She’s bleeding and she needs medical help. Her friend might too. She’d cry if she could feel something but it’s all so unreal, standing on the rooftop with Doctor Drakken as thunder claps around them.

“You’ll tell me because this is wrong,” Kim finally says. “You’re hurting innocent people—”

“I have to!” Drakken sputters. “If I am to take over the world—”

“Why,” she spits. “WHY.”

He flinches, stepping away from her. They have to shout to hear each other. “Because I can change the world finally once it’s under my command! It’s like what I told you, Possible!”

Kim looks deep into his soul, and she finds it. The child in Drakken, the child that wants to do good but everyone told him _No_ and now he’s a walking midlife crisis that can only do bad things. He failed himself a long time ago but when he finally noticed, he looked away.

“If you want to stop climate change,” Kim says, seething. Her body shakes from rage. She could kill him, honest to God, she could tear his throat out right now. “You don’t do this. Even if you win, Drew, I don’t think anyone will listen to you. This plan doesn’t make any sense.”

She feels herself crying now. 

She has been studying the shit he told her about. She understands politics now, she engages with it. She wants the same future Drakken does. Capitalism-free with enough sustainability to endure climate change. 

“When you told me what you wanted last year,” she rasps. “I never thought it would look like _this_. You’re hurting the people you want to protect.”

“B-b-b-b-but…” he cowers, slinking down below her height. His wet pants smack a puddle and he clenches his hands together. “Y-y-y-you know th-that this is necessary!” 

“No,” she says darkly. “Drew, please. You’re not thinking this through, you’re not making sense. If you want to help the world by taking over, it won’t happen. You need to just start doing it. Blow up drilling platforms, kill powerful people who will never leave office…” Her own voice sounds so foreign to her. It doesn’t feel like her.

Kim sighs and looks at him. One last try.

“Tell me how to shut it down. Please.”

Drakken looks at the ground and then leans into Kim’s arms, whispering the code words into her ear. Immediately, he flops over, unconscious. Not good. 

Groaning, Kim drags herself to the control room. At the very sight of her, the goons spring out of their seats and amscray. Apparently Kim is _that_ terrifying now. She stops in front of the console, collapsing into a chair, still bleeding. It’s hard to move. She thinks she’s going under soon. She slowly presses the correct sequence, each button so hard to press down. She’s weak. Breathing going. Vision fading. 

The computer chimes and she knows it’s over. She can hear the Li’l Diablos fall from the sky, clanging against the roof of Bueno Nacho like hail. She sighs, and pushes herself back up, and stumbles immediately. She needs to get Drakken out of the rain so he doesn’t get hypothermia. 

First thing she notices is a burning sack on the floor. It looks like flesh, like… Erica. Kim almost vomits at the sight, before realizing that the green liquid coming out of her isn’t blood. Erica wasn’t… organiac. Still, Kim killed her.

“Holy shit, _,_ ” Shego says from the corner. They lock eyes for so long, and Kim’s weak legs make her sit. Neither says anything to the other. Shego nods, somewhat sympathetically and rasps out a weak, “I’m so fucking sorry, Princess.”

Kim narrows her eyes. “Are you?”

Shego’s mouth twitches and motions towards Kim, who draws back, pulling her legs in. “Get Drakken,” Kim says hoarsely. Snot starts dripping from her nose. “He’s going to get sick if he stays in the—” she gasps as a sob rocks her whole body. “—in the rain.”

“No, Kim, stop it,” Shego says, very gently touching Kim’s limbs. “Don’t be afraid of me. Let me help you.”

Kim sits there speechless, silent tears pouring down her cheeks. Meekly, she nods and lets Shego do her thing. She cauterizes several wounds, disinfects far more, and patches her up. She presses her warm hand to Kim’s forehead. “Go to the hospital. Anything happens to you, we foot the bill, no questions.”

Kim blinks and leans back. She does hurt a lot less now, but she still feels really scared. She remembers once again that she’s still just a child. “Wh-why are you h-h-h-helping me…”

“Sh, sh…” Shego pulls Kim’s head into her chest, and massages her neck with gentle pushes. “Relax, okay? Sleep. Stopstop will find you, I need to help Doctor D now.”

“Okay,” Kim gulps. She thinks Shego kisses her forehead, and she trembles. She drifts and leans back in the chair, letting sleep come to her. Ron will find her. She needs to rest, she needs to do what Shego told her to do. Because she still trusts Shego and Drakken.

* * *

Kim doesn’t say anything on the ride to the hospital. Ron feels kinda bad, he keeps starting conversations but they are all one sided. So he gives up. When they get to the hospital, they wheel Kim out of the ambulance. Ron follows alongside her, walking quickly to keep up.

“Hey, you want me to stay with you and keep you company?” he asks.

She finally looks at him and frowns. “You should have fun tonight.”

“Well, uh, you kinda killed my date so,” Ron laughs, and then makes an aside to the orderlies, “Evil girlfriend. No worries.”

Kim giggles, and winces. “Do whatever you think is appropriate.”

So Ron stays with her. But he falls asleep pretty fast in his chair. He almost asks if he can stay in bed with her but like, noooooo. Probs not a good idea.

When he wakes up, it’s because of the harsh morning light coming through the windows. Funny, he remembered the blinds being shut but now they’re open all the way. Eyes narrowed, he looks over to Kim’s bed and yawns. “Good mornin’ KP—”

She’s gone. Kim is not in bed. He rushes over and bunches up the blankets, screaming for help. It doesn’t take him long to realize that not only were the blinds peeled back, but the window is open with the screen kicked out. 

Before the staff make Ron leave the room, he finds an envelope under Kim’s pillow with his name on it. He takes it, but doesn’t get a chance to look at it.

First thing he does is call Kim’s parents to let them know there’s a situation. It’s the Tweebs that pick up.

“Yo, guys, can I talk to your ‘rents?” Ron asks, nearly hyperventilating.

“ _Uh, sorry, Ron, they’re um… busy_ ,” one of the Tweebs says. He thinks it’s Jim. 

“Shit,” Ron swears, “Um. Um. Sorry, I’m freaking out right now, Kim broke out of the hospital and—”

The static on the other line crackles and Ron hears the phone get passed over. “ _Ronald. Kim ran away from home._ ”

It’s Kim’s dad.

Wait, no no no. 

“Yeah,” Ron squeaks. “I woke up and she was gone from the hospital too, I’m sorry…”

“ _You had a long night, it’s okay. Do you have any idea where she might be_?”

Ron comes up with a couple places, but they’re all in Middleton. He’s sure there are more, he just really can’t think straight right now. Apparently, Kim broke into her own home, packed up a suitcase and peaced out without a word, leaving a really long note behind. 

Which reminds Ron he has a note from Kim too. 

He doesn’t want to read it.

* * *

Kim feels awful.

She doesn’t really understand why she did it. But she knows she’s right.

She walked away and now she’s at the doorway in Drakken’s lair. She creeps in and hears Drakken talking to Shego. It’s a very lowkey conversation. Incredibly quiet and subdued. Honestly, Drakken sounds kinda depressed the closer she gets to them.

They don’t see her at all. It’s wild.

Drakken sits in front of a huge computer screen, and Shego stands over him, elbows folded onto the back of his chair. Not a goon in sight.

From what Kim can see, it looks like he’s planning to destroy a drilling platform. Kim’s heart skips a beat. That’s what she told him the night of the Li’l Diablo invasion. He actually listened to her.

Deep breath. Kim marches ahead, dressed in a blouse and jeans. Her cheeks are caked in dried tears, and she’s sure Drakken and Shego will notice. They’ll definitely notice the suitcase she has with her.

Everything that matters is inside of it.

Shego notices Kim first, and her eyes widen in fear. She taps Drakken on the back, who whirls around, only to immediately lurch back in fear himself. It makes Kim feel really shitty inside. 

She gets closer and drops the suitcase, passes by Shego, and rests her hand on Drakken’s computer console. She cranes her neck high and looks at the blueprints of Drakken’s new scheme, and clicks her tongue.

“That’s not going to work,” she points out. “It’ll hurt a few of the workers, they don’t deserve that. Let’s rethink it, okay?” 

Kim speaks so softly, and then makes eye contact with Shego. Like she wants Shego’s approval.

But Shego doesn’t know what to say.

“Ooh,” Drakken folds his lip against his mouth, “You’re right, Kimberly Ann! How did I not notice that—good call, good call, so we’ll workshop Phase 1 a bit and I think that will…” he rambles on and on, and already he’s starting to sound like the Doctor Drakken she’s used to.

Kim warms up fast, patting him on the shoulder and looking over the plans some more.

“I think this can work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has obviously been a really rough year for everyone. COVID, police brutality, rigged elections, etc. It is painful how awful our world is, and how so many choose to do nothing. I’m writing this fic as an organizer who focuses most of their work on climate change. Part of me is losing faith in our ability to organize and protect the planet.
> 
> I’ve been processing violence a lot. What it means to be nonviolent, what it means to be violent. Where is the line drawn. Does our opposition even care if we are nonviolent. Etc. 
> 
> That’s what this story is about. Kim is going down a violent path, for better or for worse. Something it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.  
> While this fic takes place in a fictional setting, real events are referenced. I’ll do my best to post trigger warnings. : ) I hope this story means something to you. I really appreciate your readership.
> 
> These are all super sensitive topics, and we're all processing it together. The comment section to this fic is a safe space tho. Def talk politics and how you're feeling and shit if you want to. I'm taking down anything that is offensive though. Heh.


	2. Always Speak from the Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kim does an ecoterrorism on an offshore drilling platform.

**Five Years Later  
2018  
** _(Kim is 22)_

Ron is hyperventilating and his boyfriend is _not_ helping..

“Ron, up and at ‘em,” Will pounds Ron’s back. “Cry later, we got two minutes.”

“Right!” Ron barks, stumbling back to his feet.

What a ride this job has been. Ron didn’t know what to do with himself after she left, so he just kinda _stopped_. Lived his life as a normie for two years and when that felt irresponsible of him, he gave up, and enlisted in Global Justice. Mostly to protect her from the agents on her tail; he knows people like Doctor Director want her dead.

Ron doesn’t want that; he’ll admit that he doesn’t understand her at all anymore but he thinks she oughta live. Though today is making him question shit, like, _for real_. 

The call came this morning when a BP oil drilling platform was surrounded by a surprise visitor ring of boats. Then there was an announcement that a bomb was hidden aboard the platform and set to go off. The boats were almost certainly sent in by whoever set up the bomb, so they could evacuate the two hundred person crew. 

By this point, Ron knew it was her. It had to be. Who else would target an oil platform like this, and who else would prioritize protecting its crew? 

But a bomb — like _seriously_? That’s not okay, like, people built it and stuff, people work there, some even live on it, and she’s just going to destroy it? 

Ron’s been searching with Will for so long and still they have found nothing. Not even traces of a bomb. It could literally be anywhere, if it even exists. It doesn’t help that crewmates are _still_ evacuating. Lots of hustle and bustle, it’s hard to focus. Especially when Ron knows him and Will don’t get to escape, they either find the bomb and defuse it or they get caught in the explosion and die. Pretty effed.

But eventually Ron and Will find the bomb, and it’s as deep down as they can go. Ron can hear the roll of vicious waves down here.

Ron kneels over the bomb. They got one minute and counting. He’s sweating, he’s done this before but like—he just didn’t think she would seriously…

“Ron!” Will snaps, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, focus up. We’ve got fifty eight seconds and counting.”

Ron nods along slowly, and slides a hand through his bangs, muttering the sequences of colors he’ll be pulling. Very gently, he pries the metal lid off of the bomb. He’s got no idea if this thing will activate on touch.

“Calm down, we’ve got plenty of time,” Will sighs, checking their surroundings. “To think she’d stoop to such levels though… I mean this is terrorism, Ron.”

This has been an ongoing argument between the two of them. As much as they love each other, Will can’t handle Ron’s blind defense of her.

“Yeah Will,” Ron tosses over his shoulder, turning his eyes back on the bomb. There they are. The wires. Already he’s forgotten the color to start with. It takes him a second. Blue, no green! His hand swats at the wires, only to get stopped by Will’s iron grip. 

“I got you,” Will whispers, delicately poking his hand in, curling his pinky around the dark blue wire. “You start here and—” 

Will pulls and flinches immediately. He made a mistake. There’s a spark and the wire pulls out. They both brace themselves, but after three seconds it becomes obvious that this bomb is a dud. No explosion whatever. Just cackling. High pitched cackling.

She didn’t…

Ron grabs at all the wires at once, tearing from the canister and just like he expected, the whole thing yanks out, not even properly attached to the actual interior of the bomb. It’s just a fake set of wires planted to _look_ like the real thing. But when Ron pulls it, he’s expecting another set of wires, and well they’re there but…

“Wait, this thing was already defused,” Will mutters. “What on Earth…”

“ _No shit, Sherlock._ ”

Damn, that _sucks._

A miniature screen slides in where the wires formerly were, and she stands there sneering at them in her usual get-up of flannel and jeans. “ _Did you seriously think I was going to blow the platform up? That’s disappointing_.”

She feigns checking her watch while the two Global Justice agents just sit there stunned. “ _Sorry, I needed you out of the way for what I’m really working on. You’ll find out in about ten seconds. Do me a favor though. Take one full step to the left_.”

“Why?” Ron asks immediately. Of all things, a step to the left?

“ _I miscalculated_ — _okay_ !?” she squeezes the bridge of her nose. “ _Do it or die, I gotta go. Hopping off a plane.”_

Ron doesn’t doubt that knowing her. He yanks Will one step to left and then there’s a deafening _boom_ and everything moves under them, like a rug being pulled out.

Ron tries to get away from it all but it’s too fast for him to process and he faceplants, before being rolled over his head. He flips and falls. He falls _far_. But he was just on the floor how can he fall, where’s the floor—

“Ow!”

Ron and Will’s bodies land on top of a mattress just chilling out on a rowboat below the platform, and hit it so hard that they bounce and skip over to the next boat, which is also manned by a mattress. They crash together, slipping into each other’s arms. Will’s panting and so is Ron. But damn, they’re alive.

Of course they’re alive. She doesn’t kill after all. At least for now she doesn’t kill. Ron kinda feels shitty for doubting her.

“Holy shit,” Will’s eyes go wide. Ron falls fully against the mattress and watches in horror as the oil platform shrinks out of the ocean, retracting and retracting until it’s just a speck in the air. It doesn’t seem real, this ginormous machine staying in tact and becoming no larger than a speck of dust.

When it’s over, Ron can’t see the platform at all it’s so small. But he can see her swoop in with her parachute, grabbing what can only be the toy sized platform out of the air. She glides down and lands on a motorboat a few yards away from them. She turns and looks to Ron with a very self-satisfied grin. 

Ron pushes himself up. “Kim!? What did you do?”

Kim Possible cackles again, and blows Ron a kiss before running a hand through her hair. Her boat revs up and she shoots off, leaving the Global Justice agents in her wake. 

“Shit!” Ron screams, searching the boat rapidly. “Where’s the—fucking—motor…”

“You mean these?” Will asks, dropping an oar into his hands. “Yeah.”

Ron spits. “Dammit.”

* * *

Kim pulls up alongside the sail boat waiting for her about a half hour out, and climbs on up. Chest pounding, she looks up to Shego who’s waiting for her. “Hey,” Kim mutters, twisting her wrist nervously, drilling platform turning into her personal fidget spinner.

Shego shakes her head with so much pride. “Unbelievable, Kimmie. I just… good job.”

Kim smiles, but only allows herself that for a moment; there’s work to do. “We set up to roll?”

“Yeah,” Shego nods. “I’d hop on stat, news is already slamming you.”

“Imagine calling me a terrorist,” Kim weakly laughs under her breath. “Can you get someone to make me some tea, please and thank you.” She opens up the steel door leading to below deck, and hesitates. She looks back, “Hey, is Dad—”

Shego shakes her head. 

Damn.

“—that’s cool,” Kim says, though she blatantly doesn’t mean it. It’s not worth getting into it. “See ya soon.”

Kim slumps in through the door and shuts it behind her, legs moving fast. It’s crazy that this is actually happening. She pitched this caper to Dad like… five years ago now? Problem was they kept getting stuck on how to physically _take_ the platform, because blowing it up is the dumbest way to handle things. 

It makes Kim laugh thinking of how simple the solution ended up being. 

She rounds a corner and steps into the crew’s cabin. Beds are up against the walls, everything cleared aside to run her show. A generator buzzes nearby, buried in sound blankets, giving them enough electricity to get some decent lighting going on. Without a word, she steps in front of the camera and waits while her team starts to prepare things. 

“Makeup?” one team member asks.

Kim shakes her head. She thinks it’ll work better if it’s clear that she very physically performed that heist. She wants to look tired because she is. She’s a real person, not a stupid brand.

People keep talking, hooking a lavalier to her collar. They do some fast sound checks, show Kim the frame to confirm they’re good, and then do the hacking. 

Apparently, there’s a lot of people in the supervillain industry who know how to hack into live television feeds across the planet. Simultaneously, her team blasts social media with links to watch her statement live on both YouTube and Twitch. Because cable television is seriously for squares nowadays.

Five seconds pass by and Kim gets the signal to start talking.

She is now being broadcasted across the country, replacing every single news channel. Millions are already watching, and once people catch the feed on Twitter and everything, millions more. 

Deep breath, Possible. She’s supposed to be _used_ to this by now. _Don’t choke_ , she tells herself.

“Hi,” Kim croaks, voice hoarse. She forces a smile. “I understand how that must have looked to all of you, and I’m sure you’re hearing the word _terrorist_ being thrown around a lot. I don’t want you to fear me. If we are going to upset the status quo and save our planet, we’re going to need to—”

The cue cards are throwing her off. She already memorized the speech, reading words that she’s already said is making her flub. She tries waving the goon with the cards off but he doesn’t get it. 

“—need to—um—sorry, hey, Larry. Can you…”

Finally, Larry gets it and drops the cue cards. “Sorry, ” Kim says, both to the people watching and Larry himself. “I can’t read and talk at the same time, heh. I’ll just go off book. But basically, if we’re going to save the planet and upset the status quo, we need to stick together.”

Kim holds up the shrunken oil platform. “This machine is created to extract oil from the ocean. Despite BP’s massive oil spill, they keep drilling. Millions upon millions of barrels are out there, and it’s poisoning our planet. Scientists told us two years ago,” her lips get dry and she pauses for some water. “That we had twelve years to severely reduce our usage of fossil fuels. That’s clearly not happening.”

Kim spins the platform in her hand, being very delicate not to break it which she’s pretty sure is possible when it’s in this diminished state. “Contrary to popular belief, I am not a radical. I don’t think it’s radical to stand up to corporations and governments that don’t care about us.” She tosses the platform and catches it. “Don’t get confused though, there are radicals in this story. Those are the same corporations and governments we stand up to.”

Kim holds the platform up now, making it clear just how small the towering machine is. No taller than her head now.

One of her goons hands Kim a hollow, plastic globe, which she keeps at the bottom of the screen, the platform now resting on top. 

“Those radicals treat the Earth like it’s some kind of toy,” she lifts the globe higher into frame, and jabs the drilling platform into it like it’s a needle and syringe. “They rattle it like it’s a new toy in their playpen, they exploit it for all it’s worth, and like all toys, eventually—” She looks directly into the camera lens, hopefully making eye contact with her audience. “—they break.” 

The globe cracks near the impact point, fractures splintering across the sphere until the globe completely shatters and collapses out of frame. “We can’t keep doing this to ourselves. We’ve known for decades that this—” Kim pauses, looking off camera for a moment, and nods. One of her people is telling her something.

“—is wrong,” she finishes gravely, looking to the entrance of the room. An astute viewer might notice the twitch in her jaw, or the way her hip seems to bob up and down rapidly. “It’s time to get serious. I am not returning this drill, and I’ve already worked out job reassignments for those impacted. Anyone from the 215 person crew is welcome to take them.”

The door gets kicked open and someone steps into the room. Kim motions something to the cameraman, and they dolly back to open up the room, revealing the other filming equipment and Kim’s whole body. At first, Kim sneers but it fades fast. “Ron?”

She figured they’d send in someone more experienced. Agent Stoppable has a tendency to… uh, screw the pooch, when faced against Kim. He’s got a gun on her.

Green as he may still be after three years of being an agent, Kim will never sneer at him. He’s precious to her despite everything.

“Kim,” Ron pants. “Give. Back. The Drilling Platform.”

Kim spins it in her hand, resting it on her middle and ring fingers, index and pinyk holding it down. “Nah.” 

“Kimberly Ann Possible,” Ron _clicks_ his gun as if this will scare her. “You are under arrest. Anything you say can and will—”

“Huh,” Kim cocks an eyebrow playfully. “Interesting. I basically just disarmed a nuke for you, and Global Justice is having you point a gun at me. Really cool to see where their priorities are.”

“A-a nuke?” Ron sputters. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s what this is,” Kim holds the platform out, and she catches herself. She’s still performing for the camera, it’s hard to resist the compulsion to just speak to Ron normally. Kim pauses to find herself for a second. “I’m being serious. _This_ is killing us.”

“We need it though!” Ron shouts at her, probably mirroring what some other people are saying to their screens too. “And BP is pretty good, they’ve invested more in wind and solar than anyone else! All we need to do is switch our—”

Ron keeps talking and rambling and Kim’s face falls. She’s _positive_ that someone is radioing in talking points for him. They suck though, Kim can easily annihilate Ron. But in front of millions of people?

That is so cruel, and Kim knows that’s exactly why Ron has managed to stay with Global Justice for so long, he is Kim’s achilles heel. 

Suddenly, Kim lashes out and interrupts Ron, “Corporations try to play down how serious the problem is, they ask us to recycle but it’s not doing _anything_. More than 80% of the pollution comes directly from the corporations and—”

Kim freezes, she’s doing it again. She’s talking in facts and statistics. Dad keeps telling her not to do that. _Speak from the heart_ , he says.

Kim draws in a deep breath. “What I’m doing right now is the only thing that can make a difference. We’re not organized right now to take down more platforms, but we need to organize. We need to take this seriously. So please get involved.” Ron is speechless, prompting a smile from Kim. Then she turns on Ron.

“So here’s what is going to happen. I know your orders. Take me in alive without harming the platform.”

Kim’s index finger and pinky slip farther over the platform, and twitch as if applying pressure. “I’ll break it. Or you can let me and my crew go. And we’ll negotiate in the future, but for now this is _mine_.”

She sees Ron sweat. She bluffed about returning the platform, but she knows she’s right. If Global Justice does anything that endangers the billion dollar platform, they’re effed. 

Ron drops his gun and runs a hand through his buzzcut. Kim’s not even sure if he’s aware that he’s being filmed right now, she feels kind of bad. She tilts her head, hoping to somehow communicate with her eyes that she seriously really wants to be sympathetic towards him. 

“I don’t understand it,” Ron admits. “I know oil is bad, like, no shit. But… Kim, you’re going to destroy everything corporations are doing. Everything you want them to do is more expensive, we can’t afford it, and I… fuck.”

Oh no, he’s crying right in front of her now. On national television. Possibly international. 

Kim frowns and tentatively she reaches for his shoulder, then retracts and flashes a look at her goons. She needs to make a decision. People are always watching her, studying her. Even her hesitance right now will end up as a full page spread in the New York Times. _Eco terrorist, Kim Possible, will hold everyone accountable to her manifesto, except her Global Justice best friend._

Is it wrong to love Ron? She looks at his puffy white cheeks, tears rolling off, and feels so weak.

“Ron and everyone watching,” she says slowly. “Think about the cost of what happens if we don’t take action.”

Then, Kim motions for the camera guy to kill the feed. She feels content with that ending, and steps forward and holds her arms out. “Ron.”

Ron blinks away tears and walks up to her, folding into her embrace, head on her shoulder. He cries and she rocks him back and forth, massaging his neck like she used to back in the old days. Her special spot is between her shoulder blades, his is the nape of his neck.

She whispers into his ear, “The only way we’ll ever get through this is by working together. I will never give up on you, okay?”

Ron nods, though he’s sure he thinks that she’s the one who needs to be swayed.

Kim continues, “I don’t want to be your enemy, I love you, okay?” She nuzzles her forehead to his, voice getting even quieter. “You read my letter yet?”

Ron pulls back and looks at her, eyes shimmering. “No,” he rasps.

“Well, it’s getting more outdated by the year—” Kim stops herself, noticing the camera is still running. She grits her teeth and motions once again for them to cut the feed and finally they do. She glances back at Ron. “See you soon.”

* * *

“Hey Dad.”

Kim yawns and stretches her arms while descending the staircase of her home. Atraditional though it might be, she loves it here. It’s the evil lair that Drakken and Shego brought her to the night they saved her life when she was sixteen.

Dad turns around in his chair to look at his daughter proudly. His blue skin has faded a few shades over the past five years, and some silver has crawled into his black mane. “I watched the broadcast,” he says. “You were incredible.”

Drakken’s too old and tired for field work nowadays, so he mostly stays at home working on strategies and inventions that can help Kim. He also heads most of the ‘grassroots’ operations, like this scheme includes a segment where everyone who just lost their job due to a lack of a drilling platform to work at, will be contacted and recruited into similar jobs for more sustainable businesses.

Kim smiles for the two of them, hands on her hips. She knew he’d be watching. Wouldn’t be shocked if he watched it twice. She leans in and kisses his cheek.

Six months after Kim switched sides, her parents disowned her. Kim didn’t even know she was legally no longer a Possible until she saw it go down on the news. It was absolutely devastating. To this day, she still blames herself. She didn’t open up to them like she should’ve, she didn’t explain anything, she just left. She was too scared back then, not smart enough to use her words. Now she can do that but it’s too late, that bridge is burned.

It took about another six months after being disowned that Drakken and Shego sat Kim down to have a serious conversation with her. They asked her if she’d feel comfortable with them taking her in as their daughter. And that kind of really scared her, and she said no. She didn’t want anyone doing anything for her just because they felt sorry for her. 

It took Kim a really long time to understand that’s not why Drakken and Shego asked to adopt her, they did it because of the time a girl broke up with Kim all of a sudden via text, and she needed to cry into Shego’s arms for a whole night.

Because of all the times Kim gave Shego a day off from Drakken’s horrible karaoke night and supported him with so much enthusiasm. 

Because of the times Kim had worked herself so hard to the bone that she got sick and needed to be taken care of. 

Because of the nights where Kim and Drakken would cuddle together in bed, drink Coco Moo, and watch movies.

Because of the fact that both Drakken and Shego were smiling a lot more often.

Drakken and Shego actually honest to god love her so fucking much. She never really expected love from them, but she said yes. It took Kim only a few weeks to start calling Drakken _Dad._ Shego, uh, well, Kim is still working on that. It just feels really weird calling her _Mom_.

Shego also doesn’t appreciate the insinuation that she’d ever, like, bonk Doctor D. Kim still doesn’t understand what it is they have together, it’s definitely platonic but… yeah. 

No one knows though. Kim wishes she could change her last name to Lipsky, but she doesn’t ever want her parents to get targeted for what she does. But it’s okay, she still loves being their daughter.

In this moment, with Kim sitting across her Dad, excitedly explaining and reenacting everything that went down, she feels happy. Shego slinks in very stealthily, and surprises Kim by suddenly massaging her shoulders. 

Kim giggles and looks up at her and for the first time in these five years, she says it. “Mom.”

Shego blushes and playfully bonks Kim on the head. “Ew, gross. Never again, Kimmie.” She spins around Drakken, draping herself around his chair, looking at Kim with such loving eyes. “But thank you.”

Kim’s not even thinking about how this wasn’t always her life. James and Ann Possible are so far away from her now. 

It’s just this. Kim, Drakken, and Shego.

* * *

A very pale Ron steps into Doctor Director’s office. Will tried to come in with him but apparently Betty wants to see Ron alone. 

She turns and looks at him with a soul piercing gaze, strutting towards him slowly. “Stoppable.”

“Betty,” he tries to sound tough, but it’s really not a good look for him.

“Want to say that again?” she raises an eyebrow.

“Doctor Director,” he sighs.

“Good,” she smirks. “Care to explain yourself?”

Ron frowns. This really sucks. “I—I mean, we were under orders to protect the platform specifically, so I figured even after it shrunk that—”

“You blatantly had a shot on Kim, and didn’t take it.”

Ron winces. He doesn’t understand why Betty even asks him questions, she’s clearly not interested in anything he has to say. “I didn’t want to. It would risk the platform being damaged and—”

Betty interrupts him again, “You are _insufferable_. Do you know why I hired you? I thought you’d be the solution to my Possible problem but time and time again, you have failed me. Ron Factor, my ass, kid, you’re trash.”

Ron bites his tongue. He’ll say what he wants to when he’s alone with Will tonight.

“You’re reassigned,” Betty shakes her head. “You and Will. Be thankful I’m letting you two work together.”

Ron gulps. “Where am I going?”

Betty looks back at him, and tosses over a manilla folder. “There’s a crisis in Bolivia, and we’re intervening.”

He catches the folder, knowing everything inside it is bullshit. He nods and walks away without saying anything. That’s the biggest insult he can get away with here. 

In the back of his head, he doesn’t even understand why he has to go to these foreign countries to meddle. It seems like it’s just benefiting the US more than anything, but like… Ron’s dumb. He _knows_ he’s dumb. He’s probably not understanding it, he should just listen to what he’s told and… there’s just this _thought_ , this poisonous little thought in his noggin saying…

...oh thank God, Will’s waiting for him. Ron falls into his arms and kisses him hard. He needs him right now.

He can’t stop thinking about it though. If he showed these files to Kim, she would tell him the truth, and he’d believe her. He’d join her. That’s scarier than anything else.


	3. Don't Think, Just Move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kim kills a sitting Senator.

**Two Years Later** **  
** **2020  
**_(Kim is 24)_ **  
**

Kim checks her scope again, and like the four other times she’s checked she is _still_ on target. He hasn’t moved an inch out of her sights. He’s basically a dead man walking.

Kim leans back, lower back pressing into the stone lip of the belltower. This isn’t her first rodeo; she’s dropped a lot of heads in the past two years. But it still feels weird needing to dress like this. Black turtleneck, jacket, and ski mask. No one can know this is her, now that’s a public figure and well known activist with a massive social media following. 

Nervously, she talks into her walkie, “Are we in position?”

“ _Almost_ ,” Mom says through radio. “ _Like I said, Kimmie, I’ll let you know_.”

Kim nods to herself. She could have killed the United States GOP Senate Majority Leader so many times over by now. Every moment that slips past her is a moment where this hit might end up getting botched. 

Guy has been in his seat for over twenty years. He’s faced challengers, but never a progressive. The progressives keep losing their primaries to centrists, and the centrists fail to him. It shouldn’t be like that all, he should be easy to beat. But he carries the country in his hands, squeezing it to draw blood when he’s bored.

He’s straight evil, enabling some of the most harmful legislation the country has ever seen, yet he gets away with it. Healthcare bills shot down, stimulus packages put on hold, fraudulent judges, mishandled trials, he’s at the center of it.

It’s an election year now and he’s up. It’s clear he’s not losing, his opponent is so incompetetant. These rallies aren’t getting him any points, the election’s been won. But he’s cocky, and that’s making it easier for her to kill him.

It shouldn’t be a big deal. Kim discreetly assassinated a corrupt oil company CEO two years back. She was shocked at how much it didn’t affect her at all. So… she kept killing. Because it became obvious it’s something she’s good at it, it’s another gift she has for society. Kill the people who are unstoppable by legitimate means.

This guy she’s about to ice? By all accounts, he should have been the first to go. But Kim feels nervous, and she keeps running through facts in her head, justifying her bloody actions. Think of all the harm he’s done, think of his power. He needs to die, and no one else will do it so…

Why does she feel nothing?

“ _Get to the gun_ ,” Mom says.

Kim lurches forward and grabs on, lining up the shot. The speech is nearly over. Kim keeps her eye pushed against the lens and stays perfectly still. She waits.

“ _Dropping._ ”

Kim inhales.

Two seconds pass.

“ _Now_.”

She exhales.

Down below, the Senator takes a bullet to the forehead. Nice and clean, in and out. He’s dead on the spot, but no one sees him fall. The moment the bullet is a yard away from his head, a metal box with a four foot radius slams the stage, trapping the Senator and hiding him from view. 

This is to prevent younger viewers from getting traumatized at watching a man die on television; Kim couldn’t live with herself if she did that.

The box also works to prevent anyone from getting to the body, in case Kim misses by an inch or so and that shot isn’t exactly fatal. Last piece, it’s going to take a hot second for people to figure out where the bullet even came from with the evidence concealed. She needs lead time to hit the road pronto.

Kim shouldn’t be thinking about how smart her plan is. A man is dead. She killed someone. Again. But if she thinks about that she might just shoot herself too.

Kim leaves the gun and sprints, leaping off the opposite ledge and slides down the steep wall, boots barely hooking onto the mere inches of brick sticking out. She tries to be careful, but eventually she slips and falls pretty goddamned far. She hits the ground on her feet, falling to her knees, and then to her elbows. Like getting hit by a truck, everything burns. She pushes herself back up and sprints ahead. Her run starts off messy but hits perfect form fast. She stays balanced on the peek of the slanted roof and moves as fast as she can—

—until someone flies in and kicks her in the stomach. Kim tumbles onto her back, sliding down the roof, shingles running into her back, all while a body presses down on top of her. Apparently, she wasn’t as discreet as she thought.

Kim can’t get visual, and they’re still sliding down the roof. She cranes her neck to look at the fast approaching ledge and with all of her might kicks the body off of her.

She catches herself and flips, ready to sprint back up the incline and continue when she hears an all too familiar boyish scream. 

Shit. 

Kim turns back and watches in horror as Ron’s body flops over the edge, thankfully reprieved by a loud _crack!_ of metal. He must have gotten hold of a gutter. 

Kim rushes over to Ron, very mindful of her timeline and looks down at him, fingers digging into the crumbling gutter. 

She hasn’t seen Ron in two years. After the drill platform scheme, he got reassigned to some awful shit in Bolivia. She wants to taunt him, because his actions make her so fucking _angry_. They’re both killers now. Difference is he killed activists and journalists for the government. 

But she can’t bring herself to hurt him like that. Not to Ron. Shameful though it may be, she still has hope for him.

Without a word, Kim offers him a hand, hoping he doesn’t recognize her and make this more complicated than it needs to be.

But Ron will always know; he knows how she looks at him. 

“Kim?”

Dammit. She shouldn’t say anything, shouldn’t acknowledge him. Just save his life and run. 

The gutter cracks entirely, swinging Ron out over the precipice; seeing Kim distracted him so much he didn’t grab her hand. Now he swats at the air uselessly and _crack!_ again. Ron falls. Eight story drop. Great.

Kim doesn’t trust this roof at all to be a good grip, so she leaps over without even taking a running start. She pulls her grapple line and shoots a miracle line to him, hook snagging on his uniform. Thankfully, she can work with that. 

Kim soars, flaps her free hand out, and grabs onto the fire escape to an apartment so many stories up. The metal digs through her glove and her body rattles against the rails, the cable going taut and pulling against Kim’s arm. All of that weight strains her arm hard, and she feels tendons pulling.

Kim glances towards the general direction of where the senator is now dead. People are coming her way, and it won’t be long before they pin her location. If they haven’t already. She looks down to the dangling Ron, sweating through her ski mask. There’s like, nothing, near him. Not that he can safely jump to at least.

Honestly, she _could_ drop him. Everything in her moral code at this point tells her it’s fine. He’s a war criminal, and he’s in her way. 

Kim hooks herself against the rail of the fire escape, and swings her arm like a pendulum, trying her best to give Ron some momentum. Ron picks up on it fast and sways with her, kicking and swinging farther and farther. Which puts more strain on Kim’s arm, but if it means Ron can live she’ll do it. She bites her lip and draws blood because it hurts so fucking much.

After eight swings from her and him, Ron leaps and catches onto a fire escape several stories below her. Kim groans and drops the grapple line for him to take care of and does the one armed pull up of a lifetime, going up and over the fire escape, collapsing on her back. 

It’s good to be on solid ground at least. For a fleeting moment, she imagines the senator lying flat on his back in total darkness, dead. She shakes it off. 

Next to her is a glass sliding door. Probably not smart but she needs to get out of this area ASAP, so she pulls herself to her feet, and kicks the glass. Once. Then twice. Then three times. It’s cracked but not moving, so she elbows it with all she has and boom, she shatters it and falls into the adjacent apartment. Thankfully these tenants have a carpet. 

Kim scrambles to her feet, hand retreating to her handgun on instinct. But no one is here, or at least, no humans. A shit ton of cats though. They march out and just stare at her with wide eyes.

Kim looks back at the gaping hole she just made and feels like a total bitch. Super irresponsible of her. 

To make sure these probably indoor cats don’t escape, Kim moves fast. She grabs the dining table and yanks it off its spot in the floor. A bunch of shit falls to the floor, but she can’t help that. She rolls the table in front of the door, blocking it so no kitty can get through. But there’s still gaps. So Kim scrambles and moves moves moves until the whole thing is barricaded with the curtain on the outside drawn.

She collapses on her ass as she hears a helicopter swoop over. One of the cats jumps onto her stomach to sniff her face. Needing to breath, Kim pulls the ski mask off and her hair falls to her shoulders, drenched in sweat. At this point, she’s clear. As long as Ron doesn’t rat on her, which she doubts he will. 

She can’t stop thinking about him though as she strips and trades out her outfit for the flannel and jeans in her backpack. 

Ron’s going to get killed if he keeps phoning it in for her. She needs to talk to him, but she’s sure he’s being watched. If he’d just read her fucking letter…

Kim pats the makeup on her aggressively and when she stands up, she looks like a thirty year old dude with a handlebar mustache. Doing a quick sweep for fingerprints, she peaces out the door, leaving an envelope with $1000 behind.

Gotta help the people who live here pay for all the damages she just made after all.

Plus, she doesn’t deserve any of her money anyways.

* * *

Ron doesn’t know what to make of anything anymore. His former best friend just killed a sitting Senator. An evil man who had been really holding the country back, and Betty is _pissed_. She’ll be even more angry once she figures out that it was Kim Possible who did it. Somehow, Betty always puts the pieces together.

Ron leaves Kim out of the report, because like… she’s a killer but… he just can’t do it. He can’t bring her in. She knows she’s not actively trying to cause harm, she wants to help. It’s her whole bag. 

Ron is a bad agent. Any day now he’s waiting for someone to kill him in his sleep, and then make him disappear. It’d be better than living like this, it really would.

Ron has to get off Twitter at some point, it’s devastating. He scrolls through post after post celebrating the life of this shit head senator who hurt so many Americans. It’s a bunch of conservatives blasting the left for ‘doing this to a great man,’ and acting like they always cared about the values they talk about. It’s like a performance and Ron’s tired of it.

Bolivia really fucked him up. He spent almost two years out there, destabilizing a country that from what he was seeing was doing just fine before the US interference. At first, Ron bought it. The President won his reelection campaign, and evidence kept turning up that it was a fraudulent victory. 

But the President grabbed power nevertheless. So Ron and a ton of agents showed up at the President’s doorstep and sent him into exile. 

Ron felt pretty good about it for a while. He was sure Kim would have been proud of him.

Then the new ‘President’ replaced the old one, and again, Ron thought it was okay at first. She was what Americans would call a Republican. 

Ron doesn’t really ‘get’ politics, he just knows both parties suck. He sees no difference between Democrats and Republicans, they just want to get re-elected and that’s about it…

But no, this _dictator_ was what Americans would call alt-right or um… a Nazi? That word feels a little strong but… it’s pretty fair. The military was basically no holds barred under her, that they could do anything they thought was necessary. 

Lowkey kinda scary. Ron didn’t really want anything to do with it at that point, and he’s pretty Betty knew that. She made him stay behind because she wanted to break him. Ron tried his best not to go on the field, so they had him running intelligence. Basically, Ron’s job was to find the people that needed to disappear, and then formulate strategies on how to do just that.. 

Most of his searches focused on investigative journalists and far left activists. One time, he had to run an abduction himself. And it really sucked. 

It was a far left activist no older than him. She spoke Spanish and he didn’t. Still doesn’t.

But the activist spoke so passionately and she had this gleam in her eyes that reminded Ron so much of Kim. It was when he realized that his work in the US hunting Kim was pretty much the same as this, except on a much wider scale. With hardly anyone paying attention, Global Justice could do as they pleased. Like, if Kim was in Bolivia doing her thing, she’d be slaughtered.

Ron was supposed to waterboard her, but he didn’t. He just killed her quietly and cried himself to sleep. He figured he wasn’t good enough to do this. He kept fucking up and didn’t even care about the mission anymore. But he still trusted Global Justice with all his heart. He really thought that they wanted to protect people. He believed that they knew what they were doing. 

And well, he got the last part right. Global Justice definitely knows what they’re doing. 

While running intelligence, he found out that the evidence that exposed the last President as corrupt was all planted. Apparently everyone in the far right and Global Justice knew that their evidence was fake, Ron was the last one to catch up. He asked one of his superior officers about it—which was a dumb idea, by the way, he’s lucky to have survived that—and they told Ron that, “ _We all knew the President was corrupt. We just didn’t have anything to prove it, so we just created a couple of things we were aware of him doing. It’s fake but like, it’s real too._ ”

Huh.

When Ron finally got called back home, they had him supervise a shipment to the US. It was a really important top secret operation that needed eyes on it. Hell, it was so secret Ron didn’t even get to told what it was. He just knew the logistics. Guide the shipment in from Bolivia. Maybe two years ago, he wouldn’t have bothered with it, he’d assume Global Justice was having him do a good thing.

But this time he did some detective work. He traced the shipment’s origins and followed where it went to next and it was Lithium. To create car batteries.

Global Justice was having agents supervise shipments of Lithium to help big corporations make more car batteries. 

Global Justice was… aiding in a _coup_... to get Lithium to help big corporations make more car batteries.

Ron killed a good person… over car batteries.

Back to today, Ron looked Kim in the eye. He saw her staring down at him, panicking. He recognized her immediately. He almost helped her escape so he could join her. Years ago, he made fun of Kim for turning into this person but now… he’s starting to get it. He can’t trust the people he works for anymore because they aren’t good people, and they embrace that they aren’t good whole heartedly

What’s he going to do, though? Quit? They’d kill him. 

For tonight, Ron retweets something about anti-imperialism. He writes an apology to Kim in his notes and stares at the ceiling. He still has Kim’s letter from seven years ago. This is the best moment for him to read it, but he just can’t bring himself to do it just yet.

The letter scares him more than anything else.

* * *

Kim drinks tea on the couch next to Mom and Dad, her hand shaking so hard she’d be spilling if she hadn’t drank so much already.

Things got bad really quickly. The media is outraged that someone would dare do this. The Senator’s family comes onto Fox News to weep and cry about how their patriarch was killed by some radical leftist. Some slurs are said and no one bothers to censor them or call it out. 

People eulogize the Senator as if he were some saint. Even some Democrats chime in with their own anger. 

It gets worse when the President starts talking. It’s definitely a mask off moment. Full white supremacy mode, just expressed through euphemisms and civility. He’s crafty like that, but the white nationalists listening know what he wants them to do.

Then the riot starts. A KKK riot. Because of _course_. With torches and everything. Not just in the Senator’s home state either. At least three confirmed across the country as of reporting.

Kim could out herself as the culprit, and she would be ignored. The GOP has already painted a picture of who did this, and they are black. They want blood. An eye for an eye.

Kim grabs for her gun, but Mom gets to it first. They lock eyes, and Kim snorts, drawing her hand away from the gun and to the remote.

 _Click_.

“People of color are going to get hurt tonight,” Kim looks at Mom coldly. “I need to get out there and—”

“Stop,” Mom urges. “You’re just going to make it worse. Especially with you coming in with a gun, come on, Kimmie. Sit with us..”

Kim frowns and lurches at the gun again, which of course doesn’t go well. She retracts, looking at Mom cooly. “This isn’t right. I killed the Senator and now—all Hell is breaking loose because of _me_ —” she blinks as Mom’s eyes fall onto Kim’s right arm, which is folded oddly across her chest. “—I need to get back out there.”

“No,” Shego says carefully, as if she wasn’t listening to what Kim was saying. “Hey, sweetums, roll down your sleeve for me.”

Kim winces. She’s trapped now. Dad turns the television off and they both look at her. Averting eye contact, she unbuttons the cuff and rolls the sleeve down to reveal a shit ton of bruises. All from stretching her arm to max capacity to save Ron’s life. Dad gasps and nearly cries, Mom just looks on sullenly. 

“I fell,” Kim says lamely.

“If you showed us that on your own, Kimmie, I’d believe you,” Mom stands up and walks over to get the first-aid kit. “You’re hiding it because something happened.”

Kim keeps her mouth shut.

Dad reaches towards her, and scrunches his fingers in. “You can tell us, it’s okay.”

It’s really hard to keep secrets from them. “Some GJ agent drop kicked me early into my escape. I got them off of me, and they were pretty much gonna die… but then I heard them scream and…”

“...you recognized his voice and saved his life,” Dad finishes for her. “You don’t think _he_ will tell, do you?”

Kim shakes her head, and Mom returns with the first-aid kit and sets to work, staring daggers at Kim the whole time.

“I know we need to keep a low profile, and I suck at it when it comes to Ron,” Kim groans, feeling so guilty and foolish now. “Can I be honest?”

It’s just a filler question, it doesn’t really mean anything. Her parents always want her to be open. They’re nice to her like that.

“I’m scared that none of this is working,” Kim admits. “That they’ll rebuild the oil platforms, and even more conservative politicians will take the place of who we kill. We’re not hitting the symptom, just the disease. You know? It’ll keep coming back.”

Mom raises an eyebrow. “What does this have to do with—oh, it’s because Stopstop’s with Global Justice, right?”

“Yeah,” Kim leans back as if this were therapy, admittedly glad Mom’s taking care of her effed up arm now. “I’m like super aware of the, um, _ethics_ , when it’s him. If it were just some other agent, he’d be dead by now but I… I care about Ron so goddamned much and… killing him would be so stupid, ya know?”

“Kim,” Dad leans in. She’s okay calling him _Dad_ but hearing him call her just _Kim_ is still so weird. “No one person can destroy the symptom, you know that. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “It takes a movement.”

The movement is _sort of_ happening. More and more people are getting activated, and gravitating to different causes. But it’s not organized at all and Kim thinks she could be doing more.

“We’re not going to win in our lifetime, Kimmie,” Mom says. “We’ll just keep going and roll with the punches. That’s why I need you to rest tonight, okay?”

Kim lets her cold wrist rest against the coffee table, and she looks at the bruises. Hurts like a bitch, but it was worth it for Ron. That’s what they do for each other. Make sacrifices and shit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be clear, the Bolivia stuff is part factual part fabricated and based on multiple reports on the CIA. I'm open to criticism on that because it's possible I fucked something up. Haha. Thanks for reading.


	4. Stop Running on Fumes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kim guillotines a billionaire.

**Three Years Later** **  
** **2023  
**_(Kim is 27)_

The capital city of Indonesia, and also the sex trafficking capital of the world, Jakarta, sank two months ago. It’s because of climate change very explicitly. Most of the carbon that’s warping our climate comes from Indonesian rainforests, which are burnt down for profit by American corporations. 

Jakarta sank because of American corporations.

A lawsuit was mounted shortly after by several nonprofits attempting to hold those corporations accountable to _something_ , but it very likely is going to fail. Trial is today actually. Regardless, it’s what’s on Kim’s mind today. Verdict should be coming out any minute.

Unrelated, Martin Smarty’s head is in a small guillotine set on his desk. He looks up at a twenty seven year old Kim who paces back and forth with her arms crossed, thinking. She looks down at him, remembers he’s here, and smiles devilishly. 

She’s in a black sweater and leather jacket, and boy, she is disassociating like wild. Her eyes are crusted and dry, her skin pale, her pupils dilated with manic energy, and her tangled mane loaded with split ends. 

“It’s pretty simple, Martin,” Kim drawls. “You redistribute your company’s resources globally and I don’t kill you.”

Martin shakes his head and Kim sighs, falling into his chair, eye to eye with him. Martin Smarty is the wealthiest man in the world, and also the CEO of Smarty Mart. More importantly, he’s worth $204.6 billion as of yesterday.

“People in other countries are dying because they can’t eat,” Kim sneers. “In America, our shelves are lined with more than anyone could ever need. I don’t understand why this is so hard for you. You want to live, right?”

Martin shakes his head again, remarkably calm for someone who’s about to die. “We have an overpopulation problem, you know that, Possible.”

Kim smiles. “Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night? If we redistributed, we’d be fine. You’d lose money, but… well, obviously I know that’s all you want.”

He grits his teeth. “I’m a good man! Almost a million people work for me now, you can’t do this!”

Kim shrugs. “Alright. You don’t want to work with me, okay. How about this? Bank info. Now. And you live.”

Martin Smarty presses his lips together, thinking, and then nods. It takes about a half hour to set it up, to confirm accounts, and move everything around. All with Martin’s head held under the iron blade. When it’s done, he looks at Kim eagerly, eyes wide. “Now would you please—”

Another impish smile from Kim.

Martin’s face falls. 

“Thanks for your cooperation,” Kim smirks. She is just _enjoying_ herself so much right now. “I just transferred thirty thousand dollars to each and every one of your employees, who are officially unemployed as of… well, now.” She cocks her head to the side, hair falling past her right shoulder. “Everything else has just gone to me, leaving me roughly a hundred million. _You_ are worth _nothing._ ”

“You…” Martin sputters. “You little bitch, you lied—”

Kim gets up and stands over him, grabbing onto the guillotine and brings her swiss army knife to the rope. “Don’t take the moral high ground with me, asshole. You’ve lied to millions about being a fair and equitable business. You’ve been underpaying your workers for decades now, you busted their unions and took their healthcare. You fired them during COVID and doubled your worth. You’re garbage.”

Martin blinks back tears. “I did what I had to do. I made sacrifices, but I did it for the greater good of our country.”

Kim’s eyes widen while her pupils dilate even further. She almost feels sorry for this man. But only at how misguided he is. “Just so you know, the hundred thousand I’m taking will be gone, just like Smarty Mart. I’m reallocating your resources across the planet fairly, since you aren’t willing to do it yourself.”

He doesn’t react. He knows it’s over.

Wanting to just get this over with, she asks him, “Any last words?”

He looks sullen, and opens his mouth. “I just want people to know—”

 _Snip_.

The blood gets on Kim’s hand. The head rolls to the floor. Kim sighs and looks to the door. “You can come in now.”

Mom slips in, eying the headless body and looks to Kim. “Yikes. Plan B, I guess—”

“What was the verdict?” Kim asks, mind already shifting to something completely different.

Mom bites her lip. “They lost. Kimmie, are you okay?”

Kim nods along, angry at herself for getting hopeful. “Of course they lost. It was just publicity, it should help the orgs at least. Well, let’s keep going and—”

Mom cuts Kim off, raising a hand to her chest and stopping her in place. “I just asked you a question.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Are you okay?”

Kim sighs. “It doesn’t matter.”

Mom looks at her hard, and Kim caves. “Okay, fine. I feel like shit.”

“There you go,” Mom coos, and runs a hand through Kim’s hair. “Calm down, you’re doing great.”

* * *

**One Month Later**

Ron doesn’t check his phone anymore. The news is just so depressing and each day is like a cycle unto itself. Besides, he works on important issues as part of Global Justice. He only has control over so much, so he’d rather just focus on that. 

Today is his day off and he’s having a stackage shortage, so he’s on his way to Smarty Mart. Good old reliable Smarty Mart.

Wait, not good old reliable Smarty Mart, the doors are shut. The lights are out. Ron narrows his eyes. What the Hell, man? Isn’t this location 24/7? Yeah, the hours on the door say 24/7. So what? Did no one show up to work today? 

Not cool, man. He almost wants to call the Smarty Mart hotline for customer service complaints—actually… no. He wants to call that hotline. Get some rage off his chest. It won’t hurt anyone. 

But that number doesn’t work either. So now he’s upset. Ron sits on the curb, cradling his phone while he tries to figure this out. It’s not hard to find the answer to his problem.

Martin Smarty is no longer serving customers as he has been. He has transferred ownership to someone else who just released everyone with massive severance pay checks, with the option for rehire if they want. 

They are going global and redistributing their mass stock of resources to people who need it. For no price at all. So this is how Smarty Marty dies. Bummer. Kim probably _loves_ this though. He bets she’s laughing up a storm, wanting to email the new CEO. He shakes his head.

There’s a footnote though. It makes Ron scream out loud.

 _Kim Possible is now the CEO to Smarty Mart_. What. Why?! Why would Kim—how did Kim—fuck, why would Martin… holy shit.

Ron can’t confirm it, but he’s got a hunch. And he knows this isn’t legit. Kim cheated. She did something illegal because there’s no way Martin Smarty would...

This doesn’t make sense.

He’s not going to say anything though. Betty will probably figure it out anyways, but he isn’t going to make it any easier for these people.

What Ron hates the most is this tiny feeling of pride he has for Kim. She believes in stuff, and she does stuff about it. Ron believes too, but he doesn’t do any of it. He just does what Global Justice asks him to do. He is sure Kim is about to do something super anti-capitalist. Like, Smarty Mart is the biggest store of its kind on the planet and all of a sudden it’s kaput. Wild.

Ron trusts Kim more than he trusts Global Justice. He should really be helping her, but that scares him. Because she should say no to him. He’s a bad person. He aided and abetted in a coup, he worked to kill people like her. He was conditioned. He’s breaking free from it now, and he’s trapped.

He really wishes he could text her right now to make sure she’s okay. But he has no way to contact her. Last time he saw her was that assassination three years ago, and a few weeks after that Betty took him off the Kim Possible case permanently.

Maybe if he can get back on that, he can find Kim and finally make a decision on what he wants.

* * *

**Back to the Present**

Kim hasn’t had a bubble bath since she was like ten. At a pretty early age, she just started training herself to be the Kim Possible everyone fell in love with for a few years, and her original parents let her do that. Now, she has Drakken and Shego, and they’ve both been in the field long enough to know when to draw the line. 

Kim is up to her shoulders in bubbles and steaming hot water that refreshes her lungs. Her skin sweats in such a delightful way and she breathes. Mom sits besides her, outside of the tub, eyes focused on her knee.

Despite the pleasure, Kim’s body does rock nervously. This is when she’s supposed to be working out. She’s twenty seven years old, meaning she’s leaving her physical prime pretty soon. This is the moment where she needs to be as strong as possible.

Mom looks over to Kim and flashes a tiny smile. “You’re thinking about working out, aren’t you?”

Kim’s cheeks go red and she looks away. Gently, she raises her hand from the bath. The hand that once had someone else’s blood on it. And she daintily offers it to Mom who holds it tight. “Are you mad at me?”

“No, Princess,” Mom says. “Never. I’m just concerned is all.”

“Fair enough,” Kim shrugs. “It’s hard to focus.”

“Well, it should be fine soon,” Mom says reassuringly. “I swear, you’re just like Drew. He’s probably working right now…”

Kim nods. She’s not going to out Dad or anything, but yeah he’s working. Plan B involves lots of moving pieces. They need to take the $100 mil they acquired from Smarty and use it to distribute all Smarty Mart wares across the planet in this unimaginingly complicated socialist scheme. It’s important to hit this off perfectly right at the start.

“How did you learn to chill the fuck out?” Kim asks, remembering to emote. It’s hard nowadays. 

Mom shrugs. “I dunno, I’m just good at it. I’m sure Stopstop was good at it, too.”

“I miss him a lot,” Kim says quickly. “He was like my rock, I should have taken him with me when I came to you.”

“He probably wasn’t ready,” Shego laughs. “Looking back, I don’t think I was ready either, Princess. You changed everything. Anyways, I think it’s for the best. The Plan B thing. You’re taking too much on and for once, we really need to spread the work out and organize.”

Kim smiles a little. That’s kinda been the goal the whole time. Mobilize and organize thousands if not millions of people. That’s the only way to win these fights. Kim looks back to the bubbles, and tries to focus on those. She still feels kinda guilty. She’s killed so many now and while definitive progress has been made, the country is also on the brink of a class war that will probably escalate when Martin Smarty dies, oh, about two months from now.

Cancer is what he’s programmed to die from but Kim just knows there is a flaw in this plan. There has to be.

She has some machinations involving deep fake going on to make it seem like he’s still alive, they can work that for a month before he is forced to do something in-person. For now, radio interviews and even family phone calls can be faked.

Either way, Kim is expecting a blockade of lawsuits to keep her off the field for a long time. 

“Can I give you some advice?” Mom asks.

Kim doesn’t say anything and just looks up.

Mom smiles to herself. “I know how you feel. You’re worried because in a few years, you’ll be thirty. You won’t be able to do a lot of the jobs you’ve been doing. You feel old, yeah?”

Kim hates how transparent she is, and sinks deeper into the bath. 

Mom laughs. Her laugh used to be so mean, but now it’s soft and joyful. “You’re really young, Kimmie. You’ve got so much more to experience, so don’t burn yourself out. Try to enjoy this while it lasts.”

Kim raises her eyebrows, and leans deeper into the curved back of the tub. “Okay. Um. Do you think it’s possible that I stop being the one who has to kill people?”

Mom definitely picks up on the fact that Kim won’t look at her when she says that. She leans her cheek into her knee. “I mean, Princess, you’re the one who calls the shots on that, not me. If you don’t want to…”

Kim grits her teeth and tears start coming out. Shameful shameful tears. Her shoulders rock with sobs and Mom has to pull her in, perching her chin on Kim’s soft, wet hair. 

“...I can’t keep doing this,” Kim’s high voice manages to squeak out. “Help me stop.”

“I will,” Mom whispers.

Kim relaxes under her hold, and stays in Mom’s arms for a long time.

* * *

Kim is so tired that she has to ask people to bring coffee to her now. She never wanted that, she wanted to just do shit for herself. She’s a scrappy activist, not a CEO. But she’s standing on a catwalk in a factory, quietly thanking the aide who brought her black coffee. She’s practically been running on fumes for the past few months or so, so she’s practicing a little self care now; she bought herself a nice ass black suit. Makes her look badass.

She’s got 100 mil after all, she can throw a hundred or so around every now and then. 

She rests her elbows against the railing and looks down to her left, frowning. For whatever reason, Betty Director wants to have a meeting with Kim. 

Kim can take a few guesses as to what it’s about. She’s not even sure why she’s taking this meeting, it can only be bad news for Kim. But she has always been a glutton for punishment.

When Betty gets close enough, Kim stands up, crossing her wrists behind her, palms pushing against the metal. It lets her fidget out of sight. “Elizabeth,” Kim says slyly, knowing that name pisses Betty off.

“You are such a child, Possible,” Betty sneers, leaning over the rail besides Kim and looking down. The factory is packed with workers Kim and Dad hired to help with the reallocation of everything that is Smarty Mart. “You got lucky, by the way.”

Kim knows she’s lucky. The process to expunge Kim’s bloody hands from the whole Smarty Mart ordeal was wild, but it’s over now. Legally, Global Justice has nothing on Kim. They never have anything on her. Years of chasing her and nothing. Again and again. But this caper was actually close to the chest.

“I want you to understand something, Possible,” Betty looks at Kim very seriously, and then smirks to herself. “Ha, you play with your hands like a little girl.”

Kim twirls around so that Betty can’t see her hands again. “I have anxiety.”

“Of course you do, sweetheart,” Betty coos, and straightens up. “You should enjoy this moment while it lasts, darling.”

Kim stays very still. “Is that a threat?”

Betty shrugs. “Not yet. Here’s what I did during breakfast this morning, kiddo. I took you out of our planning, I unassigned the agents on your case. I’m thinking, maybe five years now, I’ll reopen it.”

Kim blinks. This is so obviously a trap. But she doesn’t understand _how_ this is bad for her.

Betty clicks her tongue. “You don’t follow. Of course you don’t, you dumb fucking cunt.”

Kim blinks again. Did Betty seriously just call her that?

Betty cackles like Drakken used to, looking back over the railing. “You killed Martin Smarty. I can’t prove it, but I know it was you. And those senators? That was you, too. Well, I’m tired of chasing you. So I won’t.”

Kim just stands there, slack jawed and stupid. “Uh… okay?”

“You are so dumb,” Betty says. This is starting to get tedious. Betty stands up again and looks Kim right in the eye, smiling. “I know how this is going to play out. In a few months, a year if you’re really on it, you’ll be done here. You’ll be out of money, but the food and everything will be gone and reallocated to where you want it. Gold star for the day, yay!”

“Can you lighten up on the condescension?” Kim raises an eyebrow. “You’re concerned about sustainability.”

“Bingo!” Betty pumps a fist in the air. “This won’t sustain itself. I know in your mind, you think this will last the people who have nothing for years. It won’t. You’ll be _shocked_ at how fast it dries up. I’m giving it a year max after you wrap up.”

Kim takes a step back without thinking about it. “Well, it’s better than nothing—”

“—is it?” Betty crosses her arms. “See, what you _should_ have done is you should have changed Smarty Mart’s direction but kept it _intact_. You need capitalism to keep the flow going on a capitalist planet. But you don’t want to do that. You think capitalism is abhorrent, and maybe it is, but you are going to fail.”

Kim clenches her jaw. “Get. Out.”

Betty continues as if Kim said nothing, “So a year from now, the food runs out. People feel even more hopeless than they already did, as another corporation rises. There’s always going to be a Smarty Mart. Things will reset. Meanwhile, those congress people you sniped? Replaced. Replaced with even farther right politicians.”

Kim knows this. She knows that she’s been attacking the symptom instead of the disease itself. But the disease is so abstract. You can’t destroy capitalism overnight, not without a massive revolution; that’s a problem she’s still trying to crack. But maybe while she works the politics of her country like a Rubik's Cube, she’s set the people she cares about up to die.

“You escalate, we escalate harder, Possible,” Betty’s arms are still crossed. “This will continue. Your father will die—”

Kim flinches; no one but Shego and Drakken know about the adoption. 

“—of old age and disease, and if he doesn’t succumb naturally I’ll personally make sure he’s dead,” Betty snarls. Her voice drops to a whisper, and it raises the hair on Kim’s skin. “Your mother too. Then you’ll be alone. You’ll be in your 30s, Kim. You’ll be getting older and slower. You won’t be able to do field work like you do now, and I know you’ll just keep doing the same shit. You’ve already peaked after all. That’s when we resume pursuing you, and you will lose. Because you’ll be miserable and on the verge of killing yourself—”

Kim feels her eyes watering. This is too much.

Betty ignores that. “—and that’s when I lock you up for the rest of your life.”

And now they just stand there. Kim’s not sure what to do. What can you even say to something like that?

“ _Or_ ,” Betty drawls.

Ah, there’s a catch. What a shocker.

“You let me take you in now,” Betty smiles again.

Betty says nothing more and again, Kim just stands there. It takes her fifteen seconds to find something she can say. 

“No thanks.”

Not Kim’s most articulate. Betty shrugs and cocks her arm like a rifle. “No problem, shoot your shot, you know. Ciao. See you in half a decade.” She turns on her heel, trench coat spinning around her. Betty waves past her shoulder and it’s over. She’s gone.

Kim watches Betty go and grabs onto the railing for support, knuckles going white as they shake and squeeze. She grits her teeth and watches her workers. These are people she needs to protect. She has them covered with amazing wages and health insurance, but it’s already true that her funds are drying up fast. There is absolutely no hope in this project sustaining itself without community support.

What else is she supposed to do? She knows this is better than letting corporations run the world. But is she really so shortsighted?

There’s a _click clack_ on the metal and Kim turns to look. It’s one of the managers, Joel. He waves at her. “Hey, Miss Possible.”

She tries to smile. She considers arguing for the tenth time that she’d like to just be called Kim, but it’s obviously never going to take. “How is everything?”

“We’re behind on a few shipments,” Joel scratches the back of his neck, turning away. “Everything else up to speed.”

Kim considers that and pulls off her blazer. “Okay, show me where. I can help.”

“You sure?” Joel asks. “It’s really not necessary.” When she ignores that, he jogs up to match her long strides. “You want me to get someone to snap some photos?”

“Huh?” Kim blurts out. “Oh, like a photo opp.” That would probably help her out a lot honestly, like, an assurance that she’s still for the people. But she doesn’t want to be one of those ghouls who sticks a shovel in the ground once and walks away the second the photo is taken. 

“No,” Kim sighs. “But thanks for being so thoughtful. I really just need to work with my hands right now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those invested in pairings, I removed the Kim/Ron tag because I honestly don't know right now. I don't want to outline this story, because I'm really just writing from the heart each time I dive in. This story is very close to me, and as someone who is a professional organizer who has lost faith in traditional organizing, I just wanted to voice that.


End file.
